Debuting four days before "The Monkees" and concluding its run of original episodes seven weeks before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, "Star Trek" came to life in a tempest of social upheaval.

News of assassinations, war and war protests populated NBC's "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" during "Star Trek's" three-season run, and yet optimism is one of the reasons we still care about the show and its offspring today.

The original series' very premise -- that mankind would survive the 20th century, and even thrive well beyond it -- didn't seem like a sure thing in 1968.

But it was to "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry.

"I think that a lot of the enduring appeal of the franchise has always been its essentially optimistic nature, and certainly that fits in with Roddenberry himself," said Dale Hrebik, a Loyola University English professor who teaches a science-fiction-in-film class. "He had this great faith in humanity and was sort of convinced that we were getting better all the time and that society would eventually reach a point where we eliminate so many of the evils that plague us, like war and racism and poverty -- these were the kind of things that informed and were reflected on 'Star Trek.'

"And I think that optimistic spirit is one of the things that people respond to so much in the series and the movies and the subsequent series. Roddenberry wanted 'Star Trek' to show us a better version of ourselves. In a sense, 'Here's us in our best light.'"

During the long run-up to this weekend's release of Roddenberry's latest offspring -- the film restart of Kirk, Spock and the rest, also titled "Star Trek" -- optimism was the prevailing mood in Trekdom, largely because of director J.J. Abrams' involvement in the project.

AP Photo The movie, "Star Trek," is now in production in Hollywood, Nov. 8, 1978, involving members of the original television series team: from left, Leonard Nimoy, director Robert Wise, producer Gene Roddenberry, Deforest Kelley and William Shatner. Nine years after the cancellation of the television show, the space adventure's popularity is stronger than ever. The film, with the same cast as the show, is budgeted at $20 million-- more than all the 79 television episodes cost.

Building on a credits list that includes the TV series "Felicity," "Alias," "Lost" and "Fringe" and the films "Mission: Impossible III" and "Cloverfield," Abrams was handed Roddenberry's legacy in hopes that he could reanimate the original series' characters for younger audiences.

Aside from Leonard Nimoy and "Heroes" star Zachary Quinto -- who play the old and new Spock, respectively -- the cast is little-known, although the characters they play are pop-culture colossi.

Thanks to an audacious plot device that allows the film to mostly shed the continuity traps set by all the "Trek" that's come before, Abrams and his writers, "Alias" and "Fringe" veterans Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, get to start fresh with Roddenberry's USS Enterprise crew as young adults.

"My initial reaction was, 'That's going to be terrible,'¤" said Hrebik, who had not seen the film at the time of the interview. "Certainly the 'Star Trek' fan base is aging, so I think this relaunching of the show is in part an effort to engage a generation that perhaps has not been engaged by 'Star Trek' to the extent that us older folks have."

Hrebik is 40.

"While the newer series are in syndication these days, I don't think the original is (the episodes are streaming online at www.cbs.com) and it's been almost 20 years since most of these characters have been in a movie," Hrebik added. "So for many younger viewers I imagine this will be the first time they've actually seen Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc.

"While they're probably aware of the characters since they're such a part of pop culture, they would have had to go out of their way to actually see the original series or movies. Thinking of William Shatner as Kirk could become as dated as thinking of Sean Connery as Bond, and I never thought that would happen."

Originally pitched to networks as "a 'Wagon Train' to the stars" -- a reference to a popular NBC Western of the era -- "Star Trek" the TV series ultimately went so much further, and yet struggled during its short first life of three seasons to remain on the air.

Later syndication success turned it into an entertainment industry leviathan that threw off movies, more TV series and a billion recitations of "Beam me up, Scotty!"

That includes one in the 1998 action-adventure film "Armageddon," the screenplay for which was co-written by Abrams, who has been up front in his admission that he was more a fan of "Star Wars" than "Star Trek."

Roddenberry died in 1991. Abrams was not yet 3 months old when "Star Trek" debuted in September 1966.

A Texas native who grew up in Southern California, Roddenberry flew B-17s over the Pacific in World War II and commercial planes for Pan-Am after the war. While working his way into TV writing, he worked as a Los Angeles Police Department cop.

Abrams' parents both worked in Hollywood. He sold his first film script before completing college.

A rarity among writer-director-producers in that he's enough of a brand in his own right to promote his projects on TV, Abrams made the talk-show rounds last week, including "Trek"-tied appearances on PBS's "The Charlie Rose Show," NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" and Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report."

Articulate and alt-cool, Abrams is, in his own way, as much of a showman as Roddenberry was.

An early enthusiast of sci-fi fan conventions, Roddenberry tacitly seeded the fan letter-writing campaign that helped save the show for its third season.

Abrams began the promotional campaign for "Star Trek" by bringing Nimoy and Quinto to the San Diego Comic-Con -- in July 2007.

But it's Abrams' body of work that most encourages the "Trek" faithful.

"I can't think of a better Hollywood TV-and-film guy to go to," said Daniel Bernardi, director of the Department of Film and Media Studies at Arizona State University, and author of the 1998 book "Star Trek & History: Race-ing Toward a White Future." "This guy has a vision of characters, of social discourse and of science fiction and narrative and plot that makes sense for this franchise."

Abrams and Roddenberry are "both pioneers that use science fiction as a vehicle to critique issues that were topical and of their period," Bernardi said.

"Alias" is built around Jennifer Garner playing "this amazingly tough, brilliant woman -- one of the most powerful woman characters in American television history," Bernardi added. "What Abrams is doing with Jennifer Garner is similar to what Roddenberry did with all of the actors of color he employed.

"'Lost' deals with race and gender in wonderfully complex ways. J.J. is one of the few men working in Hollywood who, I think, writes women in ways that are truly complex. Think about the women characters in 'Lost.' They're strong, they're intense. Some are devious, some are duplicitous, some are heroic.

"When 'Star Trek,' just like 'Alias' and just like 'Lost,' is about what people are experiencing today... (and prompts viewers) to think about ways in which we negotiate tensions and stress and social structures -- when 'Star Trek' is about that, there's nothing better. When it falls behind, there are few things worse."

Bernardi, like Hrebik, is OK with the prequel conceit -- at least in theory.

"What's not to love about Kirk and Spock and all these folks?" Bernardi said. "Abrams is really the guy to pull it off. He can create these wonderfully complex narratives. That's what it's going to take."